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@ Bitman #FixTheFilters
2025-05-03 06:33:01
I did read what you wrote. Carefully. And what you’re doing is framing economic truth as aspirational instead of foundational.
You’re not explicitly calling for inflation, but you’re implying that the system may require changes to remain secure. That’s functionally the same intellectual position Peter Todd holds: that the protocol might need economic compromise to remain viable. And that’s where I draw the line. Austrian economics doesn’t just give us an ideal, it gives us a framework for what happens when you tamper with monetary foundations. For me it’s pretty obvious Satoshi designed that system around that framework and it’s been working pretty solid for more than decade.
The “paradox” you describe isn’t a paradox at all. It’s a misunderstanding of what money is. Rothbard made it clear: if the supply is fixed and demand rises, the purchasing power of each unit rises. That’s not a problem - that’s how sound money works. Whether miners are securing blocks or caravans doesn’t change that. The only thing that changes is your trust in incentives - which, by the way, emerge from human action, not protocol design. Austrians have that covered.
You keep saying “we’re in new territory,” but that’s just techno-mysticism. New tech doesn’t invalidate old truths. The scarcity of Bitcoin, the subjective valuation by its users, and the market-driven fee structure are all exactly the kind of emergent order Austrian theory predicts. The fact that it’s working despite these concerns validates the theory, not the other way around.
Finally, about openness: sure, people are free to experiment and opine, but don’t confuse that freedom with legitimacy. Not every protocol-level change is just a harmless “view.” Some ideas aren’t just bad; they’re economically incoherent and directly undermine what makes Bitcoin valuable in the first place.
You don’t need to be dogmatic to recognize that some roads lead straight back to fiat thinking. And the essential thing about Todd’s PR is directly undermining the purpose of Bitcoin, creating second order effects that can be modelled fairly easily. I don’t know what to make of him. I know for a fact he’s economically illiterate, but is he proposing this from a place of ignorance or a place of malice? I can’t say. His history and old statements don’t exclude the latter.